THERE MUST NOT HAVE BEEN SEVERE WINTERS IN FRANCE.

In the early days of Amtrak, the carrier sought to spiff up its Chicago area corridor service with a few off-the shelf French-made turbotrains, which were French to the buffers and screw couplings between cars, and the SNCF labels on the ash trays.

Puetz Road, 17 August 1981.

I'll admit to liking the trains, although my schedule at the time didn't allow for much joy-riding during the winter, when, as Kevin Keefe related, when things went wrong, they went wrong.

Each five-unit RTG trainset consisted of a pair of power cars, each with a 1,140 h.p. Turbomecca turbine; two coaches; and what was called a bar/grill. These were fixed-consist trains, so they had very little operational flexibility, something that would come back to bite them later. But they offered a smooth, fast ride, with huge picture windows that contrasted sharply with the rifle slots of an Amcoach. I liked the Turboliners, especially the way they sounded like a Learjet when they went whining past my apartment, leaving a trail of kerosene scent lingering in the air.

My story begins in the late morning of December 31, 1977. My wife Alison and I were living in Niles, Mich., where I was working for the South Bend Tribune and moonlighting as managing editor of Passenger Train Journal. We had arranged to meet friends that evening in Detroit for a New Year’s Eve celebration. The schedule was perfect: take Amtrak train 350 out of Niles at 10:35 a.m. and arrive in Detroit at 2:25 p.m., with plenty of time to make our dinner reservation at the Fox & Hounds restaurant in Bloomfield Hills.

What we didn’t plan on was a heavy snowstorm. The French trains had already demonstrated they had problems in the Midwestern winter when snow clogged their air intakes, as evidenced by Doug Leffler’s photo here of a dead Turboliner at Albion, Mich., the year before. We had read news accounts of Turboliners breaking down in heavy snow, and that afternoon the forecast called for more. In a brilliant burst of foresight, Alison packed a couple of blankets for our trip.

One of the drawbacks of self-contained trains is frequently that the prime mover also provides the heat, and when the turbine fails, chills follow.

We were rolling along at 60 mph somewhere west of Marshall, enjoying the snow flying past our window, when the turbines suddenly began to wind down and the train came to a stop in the middle of frozen cornfields. Before long the crew announced that train 350 was unable to be revived. We were told we’d have to wait for train 352, following some three hours behind us out of Chicago. There was no way, apparently, for Amtrak to get buses to us.

So, there we sat. It became an ordeal. With the engines down, the batteries gradually faded, along with the lights. It didn’t take long for the interior to get uncomfortably cold, although thanks to our blankets we were in better shape than our fellow passengers. As I recall, the train was crowded; I’m sure Amtrak’s crew was getting an earful from a lot of people. I tried to roll with it, but as a PTJ staffer I found the whole thing embarrassing.

Finally, with the late afternoon light fading across the barren countryside, we heard an approaching train come up alongside. Thank goodness this stretch of Conrail’s former New York Central remained double-track territory. It was train 352, equipped with conventional coaches and a trusty E unit. Steam-heated equipment never looked so welcome.

Amtrak later converted the better conventional coaches to electric heat, relying on the prime mover to run a suitable generator. (That also made possible the onboard power strips today's travelers make use of.)

In the days before mobile 'phones, modifying travel plans required creativity.

We tried to rescue our evening as best we could. Our friends had the presence of mind to head west to Ann Arbor, where they alerted the crew and tracked us down via the p.a. system. Safely off the train, we headed out into the night to find a less memorable alternative to the Fox & Hounds; we’d blown past our reservation long before.

I never made it to the Fox and Hounds in the Detroit area; if memory serves, one Jimmy Hoffa had a memorable lunch there.